Mountaineer Herzog dies

By Greg Keller THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Saturday

Dec 15, 2012 at 2:50 AM

France loved him for his indefatigable, pioneering spirit — the first man to climb an 8,000-meter Himalayan peak despite losing all his fingers and toes to frostbite, a man who later went on to scale the heights of French politics.

Six decades after his 1950 Annapurna climb made Maurice Herzog a household name, the famed French mountaineer died Friday at age 93.

The statement from the Elysee Presidential Palace said he died in France but gave no further details. He had lived just outside of Paris.

A photograph of Herzog waving a French tricolor atop the 26,545-foot (8,091-meter) peak in Nepal captured a seminal moment before the grueling descent, during which subzero conditions led to the amputation of all his fingers and toes.

“The marks of the ordeal are apparent on my body,” he later said.

Although the 1953 ascent of Mount Everest — by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay somewhat eclipsed Herzog’s achievement, Annapurna was not scaled again for some 20 years. Although Everest was the highest mountain in the world, Annapurna was said to be the most dangerous.

His book about the epic expedition, “Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8,000-Meter Peak,” was called “the most influential mountaineering book of all time” by National Geographic Adventure and made Sports Illustrated’s list of the top 100 sports books of all time. It has sold millions of copies — the IOC said more than 20 million copies — and has been translated into dozens of languages.

“In overstepping our limitations, in touching the extreme boundaries of man’s world, we have come to know something of its true splendor,” Herzog said in the best-selling book.

Annapurna is ranked the 10th highest peak in the world and has been described as the “world’s deadliest peak.”

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